RUSSIA: Opposition groups contesting next month's elections in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan claim their supporters are being arrested and intimidated by police, reports Chris Stephen from Moscow
The arrest at the weekend of 70 members of an election monitoring group in Belarus has further darkened the skies for those hoping that Ukraine-style "orange" revolutions are about to spread across former Soviet states.
Opposition groups fighting elections in Azerbaijan next weekend, and in Kazakhstan next month, say their members are being arrested and intimidated by police.
Belarus, which holds presidential elections next year, said the opposition group Partnership did not have a permit to hold its meeting inside a Minsk theatre on Saturday.
Partnership has complained of a Kafka-style situation: without a membership, it cannot apply for meeting permits; yet, when it organised last Saturday's meeting to gather signatures, it was broken up.
Belarus's president, Aleksander Lukashenko, who faces re-election next September, appears to be unmoved by the claims of opposition supporters that activists are being harassed and detained.
Similar accusations have been made to the south in Azerbaijan. Police have broken up a series of rallies by the Azeri opposition alliance, Freedom, whose members dress in the same orange colours Ukraine's pro-democracy activists wore.
Next Sunday's vote in Azerbaijan takes place in the shadow of a wave of arrests of former cabinet ministers accused of plotting a coup earlier this month to replace the president, Ilham Aliyev, with a member of the opposition, Rasul Quiliyev.
Quiliyev, who has been in exile for the past nine years, is now lobbying for the opposition at the Strasbourg headquarters of the Council of Europe, of which Azerbaijan is a member.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has expressed "major concern" as to whether the November 6th election will be fair, given the president's domination of the local media.
US president Bush is a lone voice of optimism, having welcomed the "commitment to a free and fair election" and having said Azerbaijan can rise to a "new strategic level".
Further east, Kazakhstan holds its presidential election on December 4th. Rights groups there have accused its president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, of intimidating the opposition. Like his counterparts in Azerbaijan and Belarus, Mr Nazarbayev is a former Soviet-era official, in his case the former Communist Party secretary.
In May, Kazakh youngsters leaving a pop concert wearing the orange banners of the opposition alliance "For A Fair Kazakhstan" were attacked and beaten by police.
Opposition presidential candidate Zhamarkhan Tuyakbai says he has been attacked twice this year, once with a brick, the second time by government supporters, who allegedly broke up a party meeting he was holding in the city of Shymkent.
Last year, Human Rights Watch accused the Nazarbayev government of fixing elections and harassing members of the opposition.
Mr Tuyakbai told the BBC earlier this month that the country's oil wealth has been stolen by members of the president's clique.
All three countries have had a rocky time since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. As with Russia, a tiny minority has grown fabulously wealthy, while the majority remains poor.
Rights groups see little hope of the "orange" groups succeeding in either Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan and expect the West to distance itself from both regimes.
However, the gap left by the West is already being filled by Russia, which has been less critical of human rights issues. The Kremlin has signed oil and gas deals with both oil-rich Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
More such deals are in the pipeline. Uzbekistan, whose government slaughtered at least 500 opposition demonstrators last May, also has an oil deal with Russia.
When the US criticised its failure to investigate the deaths, Uzbekistan closed down a US air base on its territory.
Meanwhile, those former Soviet states that have undergone "democracy" revolutions are encountering stormy times.
Ukraine, home of the "orange revolution", is divided after President Viktor Yushchenko sacked his prime minister, Julia Tymoshenko. The pair had spearheaded the revolution last year, defeating Russia's preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, in a major slap in the face for the Kremlin.
Kyrgystan, which also waved the orange banner after dumping its president, Askar Akayev, when he tried to fix elections last March, is engulfed in political turmoil.
Only Georgia, which began the "coloured" revolutions with its "rose revolution" in December 2003, is prospering. President Mikhael Saakashvili has ushered in reforms that have been accompanied by 7 per cent growth while also bringing peace to the three separatist statelets on his territory.